Anavex Announces Preclinical Data for ANAVEX 2-73 in Infantile Spasms

Anavex Life Sciences Corp. ("Anavex" or the "Company") (Nasdaq: AVXL), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing differentiated therapeutics for the treatment of neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental diseases including Alzheimer's disease, other central nervous system (CNS) diseases, pain and various types of cancer, announces today that treatment with ANAVEX 2-73 significantly reduced the number of spasms in an animal model with infantile spasms (epileptic spasms) in infant rats.In the preclinical study, following prenatal priming with betamethasone in infant rats, spasms were recorded for 90 minutes following postnatal trigger of spasms with NMDA injection. Treatment with ANAVEX 2-73 significantly reduced the number of spasms by 55 percent compared to vehicle (p=0.0002).The study was sponsored and performed by Libor Velisek, MD, PhD, Professor of Cell Biology & Anatomy, Pediatrics, and Neurology and his laboratory at New York Medical College (NYMC)."Our team has tested many different compounds with strong rationale for potential effect in infantile spasms. However, ANAVEX 2-73 is by far the only highly effective compound we have worked with apart from the adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH)," said Dr. Velisek. "I believe that a continuation of studies with ANAVEX 2-73 is fully justified."The infantile spasms rat model represents a clinically relevant animal model of infantile spasms since the phenotype is developmentally specific and semiologically similar to human infantile spasms, including clustering of spasms. The phenotype of spasms persists only up to 21 days of age in rats (correlating with human infancy and early childhood). Further, EEG features correspond well to human infantile spasms, with interictal high amplitude asynchronous waves similar to hypsarrhythmia and ictal EEG suppression similar to electrodecrements."The positive preclinical signal in infantile spasms is encouraging evidence of beneficial effects of ANAVEX 2-73 in another rare disease and we plan to further explore seizure reductions as measurement outcomes in future clinical trials," said Christopher U. Missling, PhD, President and Chief Executive Officer of Anavex.